After more than two months of investigation, on Nov. 9 Mexico's federal Attorney General's Office (PGR) confirmed that it was formally charging 14 federal police agents for an Aug. 24 attack on a US embassy van on a road near the Tres Marías community, south of Mexico City in the state of Morelos. The agents claimed they mistook the van's occupants—two agents of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a Mexican marine—for members of a gang connected to a local kidnapping. The two CIA agents were wounded in the incident.

The PGR charged that the 14 Mexican police agents "tried to take the lives" of the three men in the embassy vehicle. Investigators determined that the agents were driving private cars and were in civilian clothes when they attacked the embassy's van, which was surrounded by the agents' vehicles. Investigators said the van, which was heavily armored, was hit with 152 bullets. The PGR's formal charges didn't mention possible links to organized crime, but PGR sources indicated they believed three of the agents had ties to the Beltrán Leyva drug cartel. The 14 agents are being held in maximum-security prisons in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and in Puente Grande, Jalisco. (La Jornada, Mexico, Nov. 10)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, Nov. 11.